The latest stream has me worried about Shadowlands

[Denatharis]

Wow did Ion and his team not learn from BFA with system heavy expansions. The explaining of soulbinds was the worst it’s essentially a glorified talent tree from the azeroite system from BFA. Suppose it catch up mechanics for alts(see BFA they promised the same thing). The covenant system being unbalanced and forced into one choice for progression but they wait and see excuse. If they continue to go in this direction this will be another BFA.

[Razion]

I was under the impression Soulbinds are more of an open world thing. Has it been stated it will do anything else?

[Doffen]

It will be like relics in Legion. Getting it from covenants as rewards, or probably some drop and put it in. Seems to be pretty much straight forward.

[Master Factician]

I tried to watch the stream but listening for 10 minutes of him explaining a whole bunch of garbage, convoluted temporary power systems made me cringe. There is zero chance I ever, EVER give Shadowlands a try.

Logging in every single day to grind 10 different boring systems to gain small incremental power boosts over a 6 month tier before the next system or tier in current systems is released and I have to start it all over again.

How the fuck did we get to this point?

[Nagawithlegs]

Logging in every single day to grind 10 different boring systems to gain small incremental power boosts over a 6 month tier before the next system or tier in current systems is released and I have to start it all over again.

Vanilla gear was temporary.

[Rustedsaint]

Vanilla gear was temporary.

But vanilla gear is life

[CalamityHeart]

The systems didn't seem that heavy to me. Soulbinds just basically seem like unique little artifacts, even complete with relic slots. They even explicitly compared it to Legion artifacts, didn't they? It seems like a system where you're more solidly in control of how you build your character, rather than something that you're just left to the whims of RNG for, like Azerite gear was.

As for covenants and progressing them, just make alts. Use those alts to see and experience parts of the story and other covenants that you can't experience on just one character alone.

Of course, all this remains to be seen and tested, but from what I see, the Soulbind system already looks better than Azerite gear, at least conceptually.

[Alcsaar]

I have my concerns for sure. We're already seeing layers of systems at the very beginning of the expansion, it will only get more convoluted.

You pick your covenant for the covenant ability, then you pick a soulbind for a talent tree, then you put relics into that talent tree which are basically equivalent to azerite power traits that you will have to hunt/grind for the best of.

Legendary items once again - they claim the system will allow you to pick the legendaries you want, but I really doubt it'll be that simple. What it will really be like is "You have to get lucky and find this really rare crafting piece in order to craft one of these (BIS) legendaries, otherwise you'll only get crap"

[TickTickTick]

So you choose a covenant faction, each having different powers and items to buy, so that then you can choose a champion, each having different talent trees, for which you also have to grind conduits to unlock these powers.

Holy shit, it's like they took the worst out of Legion/BfA borrowed powers and merged it into one.

[IndCold]

My only hope now is that with several systems already in the game by release, they won't feel the need to keep adding more with each patch. I really hate having to "learn" a new system with every raid, specially if it complicates a previous one.

[Infernoxas]

Wow did Ion and his team not learn from BFA with system heavy expansions. The explaining of soulbinds was the worst it’s essentially a glorified talent tree from the azeroite system from BFA. Suppose it catch up mechanics for alts(see BFA they promised the same thing). The covenant system being unbalanced and forced into one choice for progression but they wait and see excuse. If they continue to go in this direction this will be another BFA.

You cant make an RPG without systems. Even vanilla had systems.

Let's play the beta first and see how it feels before we throw our hands in the air.

[Sephirosu]

To me, it seemed like blizzard just kept thinking of things for the player to do which at the end of the day isn't a bad idea. Logging in to do things other than that dailies seems ok. The problem is that Ion made it sound like you need to keep track of a lot of things rather than just playing the game basically. By that I mean: Log in, do dailies, do raid(s)/dungeon(s), do random shit, log off. If you did that (for the most part) thru out most of the entirety of wow you were basically playing the game to its fullest

Now it just feels like they're trying to cramp as many systems as possible to get you to spend even more time in game which just feels wrong... Hopefully it won't be that bad once the expac goes live.

[Dekkers]

Systemlands

[Mirishka]

Logging in every single day to grind 10 different boring systems to gain small incremental power boosts over a 6 month tier before the next system or tier in current systems is released and I have to start it all over again.

Ultimately it is no different from 'hey all that Ulduar gear is shit now because ToC is out, oh hey time to replace all your ToC gear because ICC is here! Oh hey, Cataclysm is live, time to replace all your ICC/RS gear with Hyjal greens LOL."

The game has always been about temporary incremental power gains that we eventually discard and replace. Literally always. Even the legendary items that we spend an entire raid tier/expansion grinding out. Wrathion's cloak. The rings from WoD. Hundreds of Legion legendaries. The artifacts. All of it.

These recent progression systems, however annoying they can be (and I fully admit that some of them are exactly that) are just a different spin on the same thing.

[Doffen]

Systemlands

Systems of Azeroth

[Nagawithlegs]

Log in, do dailies, do raid(s)/dungeon(s), do random shit, log off. If you did that (for the most part) thru out most of the entirety of wow you were basically playing the game to its fullest

The fact that was Warlords of Draenor's model was the reason the game flopped. The game cannot exist anymore with the old model or the majority of people get bored and quit.

[Allan Coe]

Everything they've shown for Shadowlands already exists in some form.

Covenants are just reputations, but you can only pick one.

Covenant sanctums are order halls, but there's less available.

The Covenant abilities are just an additonal talent row for each class with 4 abilities instead of 3, but you can't just switch them out at any time, they're tied to the covenant feature.

Soulbinds are just the old talent trees.

Renown and Anima are just Artifact power and Azerite with the Heart of Azeroth. Something to grind, no matter what they say.

Crafting legendaries is no different than the Legion legendary feature. Do a certain amount of activity and you'll eventually get your next legendary. It's a bit better if you can choose which one to craft first, but still, hardly a revolutionary system.

That doesn't mean that Shadowlands will be bad, or that these features will be bad, in fact I welcome the old talent trees back, although I hate the fact that covenant abilities might force me to choose a certain covenant, when I really wanna join another one.

But at the end of the day, this is all old stuff with a new coat of paint. Give it a new name and people will think it is a new thing.

[guisadop]

why not just make gear behave normally and spend this manpower on actually interesting content for the player?

[Lefrog]

Everything they've shown for Shadowlands already exists in some form.

Covenants are just reputations, but you can only pick one.

Covenant sanctums are order halls, but there's less available.

The Covenant abilities are just an additonal talent row for each class with 4 abilities instead of 3, but you can't just switch them out at any time, they're tied to the covenant feature.

Renown and Anima are just Artifact power and Azerite with the Heart of Azeroth. Something to grind, no matter what they say.

Crafting legendaries is no different than the Legion legendary feature. Do a certain amount of activity and you'll eventually get your next legendary. It's a bit better if you can choose which one to craft first, but still, hardly a revolutionary system.

I like these comparisons. My issue is the layering they've done to convolute things.

Essences are a good example It's basically 1 on-use trinket and 3 passive trinkets that are acquired through various means of gameplay. BUT I have to go to a different vendor and level up my neck, and only swap them out in a rested area, etc etc. If they had just added 4 more trinket slots to my character it would have been easier to keep track of.

They could have easily made a new talent row in the UI, colored it a special color that changes with your covenant, and not have to open 6 different UIs to double check my character's settings.

[Allan Coe]

I like these comparisons. My issue is the layering they've done to convolute things.

Essences are a good example It's basically 1 on-use trinket and 3 passive trinkets that are acquired through various means of gameplay. BUT I have to go to a different vendor and level up my neck, and only swap them out in a rested area, etc etc. If they had just added 4 more trinket slots to my character it would have been easier to keep track of.

They could have easily made a new talent row in the UI, colored it a special color that changes with your covenant, and not have to open 6 different UIs to double check my character's settings.

Yeah many of these new systems complicate things unnecessarily. Like I'm now getting into healing on my druid and paladin, and all of a sudden my corruption levels are higher, because one of my dps essences had corruption resistance, which is missing in my healing spec and I need to go get the corruption resistance essence for my heal spec and all of these things compound and just make it less fun to play. So there I am, just having found some fun in healing again, and it feels like the game is just making it harder for me.